


these hands aren't meant to hold

by nevermordor



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Biting, Blood, Explicit Language, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:46:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4538550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermordor/pseuds/nevermordor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your hands are the only good thing about you,” Fletcher murmurs. His lips brush against Andrew’s fingers with every word. "You know that, right?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	these hands aren't meant to hold

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, well I watched Whiplash nearly 7 months ago and never got over it, and then this went ahead and happened. Yay?
> 
> Actually, though, I'm super excited to try writing for this fandom. I hope you guys like this, and I'd love to hear feedback/thoughts if ya got 'em.
> 
> Thanks again for reading!

Andrew drums until the rawest of his blisters finally bursts. 

Heat spills over his palm and his sticks clatter to the floor. Under the fluorescent light of the practice room, his blood looks black. It slips between his fingers, spatters the drum set, drips steadily to the floor.

His t-shirt sticks to his back as he bends to retrieve them. His vision’s going hazy. In the corner, nestled in his sweatshirt, his phone glows bright and brief with another voicemail from his dad—that makes three now. It’s late. The light blurs and dies, as he blinks sweat out of his eyes.

His ears ring. His thoughts are rattled, like he’s still pounding away at the drums. Everything hurts. It’s always hurt—when he was younger, his hands too soft, his legs barely long enough to hit the pedal. But not like this. Not this ache, that pulses deep in his gut and in the cords of muscle in his arms. Not the one that’s lodged itself too deep, the one that keeps him awake night after night. The one that’s not pleasurable and not unpleasant.

Andrew flexes his fingers. His blood runs like water and smells like iron.

There’s an exasperated sigh from the doorway of the studio.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Neiman.” Fletcher’s arms are folded across his chest. He’s eyeing Andrew with the apathetic interest of someone watching an insect squirm beneath a microscope. “I told you to _practice._ I didn’t say bleed all over the goddamn kit.”

Andrew drops his hands to his knees, out of sight, even though it’s already too late. He can feel the blood start to seep into his jeans. He blinks again, clearing away the sweat, the film of exhaustion; focuses on the lines in Fletcher’s face, on meeting his gaze as evenly as he can.

“What are you? Some kind of masochist?” Fletcher sneers. Not for the first time, Andrew is reminded of a shark circling its prey. He wonders idly if Fletcher could smell the blood from down the hall and the thought almost makes him laugh. He bites down on the impulse but Fletcher must see it anyway because his eyes narrow further and his mouth turns down at the edges. “You had better be cleaning up after yourself, you little faggot. I don’t wanna replace you with Connelly only to have him catch fucking AIDS—”

“Are you done?” Andrew cuts in and hardly recognizes his own voice. It’s weary, bored even. Somewhere beneath the haze of exhaustion, Andrew feels a dull stab of pride.

Fletcher’s eyes glitter in the dim light of the studio. “Don’t interrupt me, Andrew.”

Andrew snorts but keeps quiet all the same. He tries not to think about the prickle that ran through him at the sound of his name, at the way Fletcher says it. 

Andrew. _Andrew._ Slow. Soft. Not unlike a threat.

Blood pools inside his fist.

“Get out of here. Go home to your boyfriend.”

“I’m not done practicing yet,” Andrew replies calmly, even as his arms shake and his muscles jump with exhaustion.

“Aw. Well, that’s nice. Except it wasn’t a fucking suggestion. Go home.”

Andrew’s fingers tighten around his sticks. The wood is wet.

Fletcher’s brow furrows. “I swear, Neiman, get your pathetic, pansy ass off the stool or—”

The crash cymbal rings out loud and clear as Andrew’s arm draws back, falls forward, the stick striking again bronze. The sound hurts his ears. He hits the cymbal again, rapidly, the crash of it reverberating up his arm and into his core. He collapses back into the final measures of “Caravan” and his hands shake, sticky, and the inside of his mouth tastes like copper where he bit his cheek. Andrew keeps playing, the music pulsing through him, electricity in double-time. His eyes close and he can still feel the heat of Fletcher’s glare and Andrew smiles all the wider for it, smiles for the pain in his right hand and the smell of blood. He plays wild, hitting as hard as he can. The pain anchors him.

The final notes. A crescendo. And silence. The sticks slip from his hands again and hit the floor. His breath comes ragged and Andrew keeps his eyes shut tight. His entire body vibrates. He waits for the anxiety to pass, the thrill to die. And it will die, as it always does: The end of a song always leaves him hollow, leaves him with twitching fingers and a restless mind, until the next song, the next chance to reach, to try and touch perfection.

A hand on his shoulder. Andrew starts, and the weight of it holds him in place.

“I told you. _Don’t_ interrupt me, Neiman.”

“Bite me,” Andrew murmurs back.

Fletcher’s fingers dig in, tight. “Get up.” 

The lighting in Fletcher’s office is dull and warm and yellow. It reminds Andrew of home. It makes him think of his father, curled up on the couch after grading homework, falling asleep as he reads a novel and ignores his own, languishing in a drawer somewhere. It makes him think of the three missed calls on his phone and then Andrew pushes those thoughts away and tries not to think at all. He focuses instead on the dull throb of his right hand on Fletcher, who’s pulling out a medical kit from the bottom drawer of his desk.

“Sit,” Fletcher tells him. Andrew hesitates, and then takes the leather chair behind Fletcher’s desk—the only seat available. He waits to be reprimanded but Fletcher pays him no attention, as he digs through the first aid box to retrieve a cotton swab and a small brown bottle.

“Hand.”

Andrew uncurls it, palm up, like an offering.

Fletcher pours something over the cotton swab—it smells sharp, antiseptic. When he kneels down on the floor, Andrew nearly starts to his feet again, panic knotting inside him. Fletcher is too close, and the chair is too heavy: Andrew’s sneakers slide, useless, against the linoleum. At his feet, Fletcher quirks an eyebrow. There’s a shadow of a smirk playing on his lips that Andrew isn’t sure how to read. He looks away, down at his mutilated hands.

They didn’t used to look this bad. Maybe because he’s never played semi-professionally before. Maybe because, when he lived at home, his dad always used to tell him when to stop. _That’s enough, Andy. Take a break. Don’t beat yourself up._

The first swab of the cotton, and Andrew represses a groan of pain. The alcohol stings, the blood smearing. He tries to pull away instinctually, and Fletcher grabs him, his own massive hand sealing around Andrew’s wrist, holding him in place.

Another swipe of cotton and Andrew can’t help but hiss.

“Quit whining.” Fletcher’s grip digs in against the bones of Andrew’s wrist.

“It hurts.”

“I thought you liked pain,” Fletcher says, snide.

“I’m not a fucking masochist.” 

Fletcher pauses, brow furrowed in mock-surprise. Up close, his eyes aren’t actually gray. Up close, Andrew realizes, they’re actually blue. 

A small, desperate part of him wishes he could just go home to his dad.

“Could have fooled me.” Another swipe of the cotton, now stained pink; Fletcher tosses it into the trash. He reaches for a roll of gauze. “Calluses are one thing. This is fucking ridiculous.” He winds the gauze too tight, but Andrew doesn’t think to complain. Fletcher still has one hand wrapped around his wrist and Andrew is startled at how soothing the pressure of it feels. “I’m not gonna keep coddling you. Got it, Neiman? I don’t need your personal bullshit ruining my band _and_ a perfectly good drum kit.” 

A single dot of red appears, seeping through the pure white of the gauze. 

They both know perfectly well that this is a pointless gesture. That the gauze will be ripped away the minute Andrew gets back to his room, that he’ll be back on his own kit even later tonight, that at three in the morning he’ll be bent over the dorm room sink, watching his own blood slip down the drain.

“Let me go,” Andrew says quietly. Fletcher doesn’t. Both of his hands cup Andrew’s. They’re too big. They trap him.

They’re so close. Fletcher’s cologne is thick and sharp. There are heavy lines under his eyes. This close, Fletcher’s whole face seems to sag. Andrew finds himself preferring the other Fletcher, livid with rage and screaming, not this man who looks a little too tired, a little too old, the man who is still holding onto him.

The first brush of lips against his knuckles makes everything in Andrew quiver. He pushes against the floor for leverage but the chair doesn’t budge an inch. Fletcher’s eyes are on his; Andrew can’t tell if he likes this or if he maybe wants to puke. The lights are too dim and they’re too close and all alone. The office swims around him.

Another kiss, against the tips of his fingers.

“Stop,” he hears himself say.

“Make me.”

A hint of teeth against his index finger. Andrew’s face is pounding and flushed. Fletcher’s lips are soft, even as he stares up at Andrew in the same calculating way that he always does. Everything about the way Fletcher touches him is careful, is gentle. Andrew’s stomach churns with nausea, even as heat surges in between his legs.

“Don’t,” he mutters and when Fletcher ignores him, Andrew yanks against his grip to no avail. _“Don’t,”_ he says a little louder, embarrassed by the anger in his voice. “What—?”

“Your hands are the only good thing about you,” Fletcher murmurs. His lips brush against Andrew’s fingers with every word. “They really are.”

Andrew stares blankly. Fletcher bites the tip of his thumb, _hard_ , and it takes everything in Andrew not to whimper.

“I—”

“They’re perfect, actually.” Fletcher looks up at him, eyes glassy and cold; Andrew wonders, not for the first time, just what it is that Fletcher sees in him—wonders if Fletcher would ever tell him, if Andrew would ever want to know. “But if you don’t take care of them, if you keep playing like a fucking dumbass, if you damage them, then you’re useless. For once in your sad, miserable fucking life, do something right.”

It’s not exactly a plea, Andrew realizes. But it’s very close. His hand throbs, the ache of it sinking to his core.

Fletcher licks his lips. “You get me, Andrew?”

“Yeah.”

“Say it.”

“I get it,” he says. And he does. He gets it.

A flicker of tongue, as Fletcher takes Andrew’s index finger in his mouth, to the knuckle, and it’s hot and wet. Andrew bends his finger, his nail scraping hard against the roof of Fletcher’s mouth, and when Fletcher bites him again, his teeth sinking in deep, Andrew lets himself gasp.

Fletcher pulls back at length; he doesn’t release Andrew’s wrist. “Don’t fuck this up for us, Andrew,” he says quietly. “Or I’ll kill you.” He presses a firm kiss to Andrew’s shredded, bandaged palm. “You’re nothing if you can’t play. You know that, don’t you? You’re _nothing.”_

Andrew nods. Fletcher kisses his palm again, the pressure of it painful and almost sweet. “Yeah,” Andrew says, feeling his mouth twist into something crooked and almost like a smile. “Yeah, I know.”


End file.
